How do you answer questions like these?

[Velvis]

A long time client in a small 3 person office. All employees have access to the main guys email. One of the employees thinks there isn't a normal amount of email this morning for that one particular main account (the other accounts seem fine to them) and wants me to look into it. (they get 2x daily spam reports and know how to release any mail that might be false positives, so they could see anything that was blocked.)

Email is flowing and no one specific said they sent something and it wasn't received.

I guess I'm not quite sure how to answer a question like that.

Any suggestions?

 

[Mr. Ingram's Computer Repair & Shoppe]

It's called a slow day... if they can't say what exactly did not show up, then you are fine...

 

[Velvis]

yeah, i know its just tough trying to reply and not insult peoples intelligence or explain I have no way of answering that question

 

[Mr. Ingram's Computer Repair & Shoppe]

A long time client

VVV

not insult peoples intelligence

I may just be less "professional" but all my long-time customers are either okay with my explanations, or they aren't my customer.

They pay for my (computer) opinion, I'll give it to them.

 

[Markverhyden]

When I get questions like those I tell the customer that unless they are actually hosting their email server, which is much more expensive, I can't actually look at the email flow. If they are concerned about something specific I tell them to contact their customer saying that they might be having email server issues and to send a test email just to check. Nobody has a problem doing that.

 

[Mainstay]

Just run your checks and confirm all is well.

Tell them what you did and your findings.

Tell them to let you know if anything specific occurs / doesn't occur and that you'll keep an eye on the server / account for the next 24 hours.

Then bill them accordingly.

Simple.

 

[thecomputerguy]

Send them an email and when they receive it everything is working fine ... Call me when there's a real problem.